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Local Atmosphere Heated Rapidly Before Japan Quake
eldavojohn writes "A new paper presented at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland shows the rapid heating of the atmosphere directly above the fault days before the devastating earthquake hit. This is theorized to be the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism that occurs when large amounts of radon are released due to massive stress in the fault right before the quake. This can be detected with satellites analyzing infrared waves: 'The radioactivity from this gas ionizes the air on a large scale and this has a number of knock on effects. Since water molecules are attracted to ions in the air, ionization triggers the large scale condensation of water. But the process of condensation also releases heat and it is this that causes infrared emissions.' This is a shift from the Haiti earthquake where DEMETER was used to monitor ultra low frequencies. The presence of radon could also possibly explain erratic wildlife behavior prior to an earthquake."
So does this mean we just might have a reliable earthquake detector, or is it only a sometimes-thing?
So does this mean we just might have a reliable earthquake detector, or is it only a sometimes-thing?
Or it may be a too-often-thing. Many earthquakes are small, barely noticeable. It would be more useful if the magnitude could also be predicted.
As an aside, studies have shown that naturally released radon will considerably increase the levels of radiation in the area. Could this, in part, be responsible for the increased rad levels measured around Japan in the time following the quake, and perhaps around the world (considering the magnitude of the earthquake)?
Why haven't we heard of this radiation "concern" following other quakes? Probably because no Nuclear Plants were melting down at time to draw public attention away from the quake itself.
If there was a large release of Radon days before the quake; is it possible that a certain proportion of the elevated radiation levels locally are due to this, rather than releases of radioactive material (iodine/caesium/etc) from the Fukushima power station? Was there anything detected on local radiation detectors prior to the nuclear incident?
This isn't a "there was no release from Fukushima it was all radon!!" post (because there quite clearly was), I'm just intrigued
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
what are "knock on effects"?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
If this has anything with the mysterious white lights that were reported during the quake (apparently not an entirely uncommon, but still unexplained, phenomenon), and if there could be any connection with what some researchers are saying about major earthquakes being linked with solar flare activity.
In my mother country, Greece, we have a word for this: koufovrasi. Supposedly (or so the superstition goes), a few hours before an earthquake, the weather becomes hot, stale, like you're choking, and it's like the sound doesn't travel as much (that's why it's called as such, which in free translation it means "deaf, boiled weather"). In the villages of the mountain Epirus, this is a known "sign" that an earthquake might hit soon. I personally experienced this kind of weather once or twice during in my early life there, but I don't remember if an earthquake ever hit soon afterward or not.
And the threats continue. http://www.prisonplanet.com/secret-weather-weapons-can-kill-millions-warns-top-russian-politican.html
We have been blinded by the Vast Oligarchical Masonic Banking Illuminati Conspiracy (or VOMBIC) and we can not see the forest for the trees. Please enlighten us, how did the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project cause the release of radon, local ionization of the lower atmosphere, and subsequent water vapor condensation leading to localized lower atmospheric heating?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Or, they were experimenting with quantum physics, and the heat up was a backwards time release of energy from the meltdown to occur days later... oOoOoOo!
I don't believe what I just said, but it sure sounds cool.
I8-D
There always exists the possibility that there could be no dependency between the earthquake and the change in the temperature of the atmosphere and it could have happened to be just an unfortunate coincidence resulting in many scientific and non-scientific heads banging themselves against the wall looking for something that isn't there at all....
A good deal of the vibrational energy of the quake eventually will end up as waste heat, so my first question would be whether there is normally a heat plume seen over the site of a quake (adjusting for wind patterns)? There had also been a significant quake already in the area a week earlier. Can it be ruled out that this heat signature could be the result of the earlier quake's energy?
Is there, realistically, an area on Earth that does NOT have some likelihood of natural disasters?
Speaking about the US specifically, North Dakota not at much risk for earthquakes or tsunamis, but they do get tornadoes, blizzards/heavy snow, spring flooding, etc. Not to mention that its pretty far away from the population centers that actually *need* the electricity being generated, so then you are looking at transmission costs, capacity, maintenance (and of course the risks associated with those).
You're also an idiot.
Radon is a gas and that part of the ocean is very deep. How would it have traveled a few miles to the surface so quickly and without dissolving? You might think that all noble gases are not soluble in water, but radon is actually fairly soluble.
> I'm a man, not an animal.
Thanks for clarifying that, my brother primate.
Yes, Sweden.
Please move all valuable infrastructure here.
(I'm only somewhat joking - the only real risk is that we're far enough up north to be quickly affected when the next ice age comes along)
it's in my head
Zhirinovsky [...] has been dismissed as a “clown”
He's a populist and probably likes being called a top-politician.
but it wouldn't take a lot of money to get an early warning system up and running. its worth a try at least
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If Radon is being released BEFORE a quake occurs, wouldn't it be insignificant to the amount of Radon released DURING and AFTER an earthquake? And therefore, if the atmosphere was heating before the earthquake, wouldn't it be doing so much more significantly during and after the earthquake, so much more so as to be obvious?
Is your last name actually Noory?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
They are trying to cover up the fact that Fukushima melted down several days before the tsunami, and actually caused the quake. But they are not fooling me! *clutches tinfoil hat*
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
How does one account for the fact that the fault is underwater, and the radon would have to bubble up through all that water, and not dissolve in it or be carried elsewhere by currents as it came up? Also, is the activity of the radon at the concentration it might reasonably achieve in the atmosphere sufficient to account for significant ionization?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
green, renewable energy
No such thing. Not in the quantities needed to supply our activities. We'd have to ration light, heat, all mechanical activities, and food (which is energy too) to fit into the budget that would give us. And ban breeding.
We need to stop using fossil fuels, build nuke plants, and continue in the search for high-efficiency solar power.
Let's see, it would take covering 15% of all flat land in Japan with 10% efficient PV panels to produce the same amount of electricity as they used in 2008 (1,000TWHr's) (~75,000km^2 flat ground, ~3kWHr/m^2/day). It would only cost about $4.5 Trillion to do. Oh and that doesn't account for storage, distribution, or maintenance costs or the fact that you'd need a much larger installation to handle peak demand. I'm not sure that spending 6% of GDP per year (figure other costs are about equal to panel costs over 30 years) just for electricity generation is something Japan is willing to do even after this disaster.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
They were only a few hundred miles off with the HAARP this time.. We'll quake you up yet NK...
Avoiding natural disasters is a canard. Systems can be designed to tolerate worst-case scenarios. The problem at Fukushima is they didn't design for worst-case. They designed for events that weren't nearly far enough out on the tail of the distribution. Someone murdered Japan for a couple of bucks.
Not to mention that its pretty far away from the population centers that actually *need* the electricity being generated
Its apparently much cheaper to move the population than to build provably perfectly indestructible infrastructure.
One big problem is attitude. A blizzard (of which I've survived a hundred or so) is pretty much no big deal for the non-darwin award winners who live there and know what to do. Its just windy snow, who cares other than journalists trying to hype it up. A coastie transplant who never saw snow before might run around like a chicken with its head cut off before their first blizzard, but for the natives its pretty much a nice excuse for a day off.
Another problem is people tend to be pretty apathetic about stuff they expect and experience on a regular basis; look at big city dwellers attitudes toward high crime, or Californian attitudes toward earthquakes, for example. Forcing people away from an area that gets a hurricane once a generation, is going to be ... difficult. Best finish getting rid of civil rights before bothering to try it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
it would take covering 15% of all flat land in Japan
Why do PV panels require flat land? Or, for that matter, land?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Because building a solar farm on mountains or floating barges is going to be even more expensive.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm gluing radon detectors to all of my clothing. When "The Big One" hits, I'll be looking down from my emergency air balloon and laughing.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
TFA doesn't really give a time scale other than "a few days before". I wonder if at least some of this gas was released from the 7.1 preshock that occurred on the exact same fault on March 9(2 days before the big one). Could potentially explain the source.
Monstar L
Colorado is pretty safe...except for bears.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is one of the most interesting items to float across SlashDot in a long time. This could be very useful.
Philadelphia... the only disasters that occur with any regularity here generally relate to an increased choking hazard risk right around playoff time.
Yes. Therefore please do the world a favor and stop breathing immediately.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No, the atmosphere did not heat up rapidly as a result of the quake. This article is total bullshit.
1) Geology: There is no "buildup of unusual stresses" in the days before an earthquake. The stresses build up over decades: the only thing that changes suddenly is the Earth's motion in response to them.
2) Oceanography: Any radioactive gases released by the fault (the mechanism claimed by the authors) would be released *at the bottom of the ocean*. From there it would have to dissolve in the ocean and be carried to the surface. This takes a *LONG* time.
3) Meteorology: Any gases released will mix rapidly in the atmosphere, forming a plume stretching hundreds of miles from the source in a matter of hours. It will not form a coherent blob hovering over the fault.
4) Statistics : the plot in question is supposedly based on "NOAA OLR data". It's been massaged to within an inch of its life, using a statistical technique which is highly sensitive to what happened not just during 2011, but to the vagaries of weather in 2006-2010. The result is a massive exercise in small-number statistics, which is then amplified by:
5) Data visualization: Notice that the OLR "spikes" form nice concentric circles, and they seem to line up along a latitude line. Why? Because what you're seeing is data smoothed to a radius smaller than the actual size of the atmosphere being measured. The link below is to the *actual* raw NOAA AVHRR OLR data over Japan: there are only 9 real data points in the field of view shown by TFA, and they do not show any sign of a peak in OLR over northern Japan.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/veC_EraWL5NUXaCbH6iROcyKBwp3MOnR9qYUE-fJ7v0?feat=directlink
"Murdered Japan" ... I don't know where you get your news, but Japan is very much alive.
Also, please remember the current death tolls :
-> the actual disaster : 12813 and counting
-> the nuclear meltdown : 0 (1 badly burnt, and 2 people got smacked against the building by the tsunami, then died. They are not counted. Although around 2000 people are temporarily relocated, the large majority of them were relocated because of the tsunami when it destroyed their houses)
Frankly, I think that if you want to reduce deaths during quakes and tsunami's ... you don't have to worry about nuclear plants. In fact, you could let them melt down entirely, and feed the local cooling water to the country's babies and you would still barely increase the death count.
Instead, worry about trains, cars, buildings, ... Worry, even, about roof-mounted solar panels falling down and wind towers toppling. They cause more deaths than all damaged nuclear plants together.
Don't forget ... sometimes systems fail. The high speed train to north Japan followed exact procedure after the quake. They stopped the train using the emergency brakes. They locked everything down, disconnected the power systems and evacuated the passengers, got the local police present and got medical aid. Every procedure (presumably) followed to the letter. Then the tsunami came. There were no survivors. Not one.
Sometimes, you're just fucked.
I would expect it would easily dissolve in a couple of kilometers of ocean water above it, especially at those pressures.
Bert
No such thing. Not in the quantities needed to supply our activities. We'd have to ration light, heat, all mechanical activities, and food (which is energy too) to fit into the budget that would give us. And ban breeding.
Not in any quantities. Not a single millionth of a picowatt. Any such energy would violate the second law of thermodynamics.
In practice. Oil use means doing :
sun -> plants -> tectonic movement -> heating up the stuff -> more tectonic movement -> digging it up -> using the energy
The plants used in oil -> energy conversion were long dead.
BUT: "renewable energy"
sun -> using the energy
sun -> wind -> using the energy
See what is missing in that chain ? "plants" ...
I don't get people that think that directly using solar power will be better for nature. We have to steal the energy from plants directly when using solar or wind power (yes, it's sometimes hard to point out which plants exactly are affected by a specific solar panel. However, there's no getting out from under thermodynamics : if you're getting power from the sun, that can only happen if some plant is not receiving it).
Large scale solar or wind power implementations will not be good for nature. Right now the effect is a drop in an empty bucket, but that won't remain so.
PRODUCING renewable energy is relatively cheap and easy. STORING renewable energy is not.
Of course solar panels will never overcome 10% efficiency, especially if (as the OP said) we invest heavily in researching ways to improve efficiency. This is why we should not fund research that could improve efficiency of solar panels. Because it will obviously not improve the efficiency. You are perfectly right!
You are also right that we should not destroy non-solar plants because for now it is not practical. And as everyone knows to built a solar plant you have to destroy all non solar plants, because they hate each other like dwarves and elves. No, we cannot afford to destroy all our power, so we cannot build any single solar plant.
Which, by the way is not made of solar panels.
I got pulled away from my office before submitting this, so everything has probably already been said, but in case it hasn't:
I wondered that myself, but I don't think that would be case for a couple of reasons. Many of the detections of radioactivity did identify the radioactive specific isotopes (such as iodine, cesium) that were causing them. The ones that didn't were centered around Fukushima, unlike what you would expect from a large, distributed Radon release like the article is talking about.
Tornadoes are easy to guard against (build it beefy or ideally underground). Hurricanes and floods are easy to avoid if you have your pick of any location. Blizzards and heavy snow are more of an inconvenience than a danger. So you can pick just about any inland location on any big continent, as long as you avoid Asia.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A Blizzard can shut down infrastructure; which has a hole lot of risks involved.
Either a blizzard is a big deal, or you are all lazy slackers who take a day off for events that aren't a big deal.
I've been to the midwest, so I wouldn't put my money on you all being slackers.
Bore? certainly, but slackers? no, not really.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
haha. If we learned anything from Katrina, the recent earth quakes and tsunami..it' a pretty on reliable way to kill people in any quantity to be effective.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
By definition, an increase in the temperature is Global Warming. Global Warming is only caused by Greenhouse Gases (don't you dare to claim otherwise, or the AGW folks will have you drawn and quartered). Greenhouse Gases are created only by man, and mostly by SUV's (again, see the AGW folks). Therefore, the Japan Quake was caused by SUV's.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Images in TFA show infrared activity from March 8.
There was actually a strong foreshock on March 8 (March 9 Japan time) http://tenki.jp/earthquake/detail-3568.html
So the infrared was probably not prior to the earthquake, but during an earthquake, i.e. the foreshock.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
When i was in Colombia I once saw the sky full of small round clouds. The locals told me that was a sign there would be an earthquake, and it effectively happened the next day. I never saw clouds like those again anywhere.
The crack, lay it off. It is not good for you. I mean, it was always clear that you are a flaming idiot, but, dude... calling you crazy as a shithouse rat would be an insult to all upstanding shithouse rats in the world....
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I really wish people would quit haarping about weather weapons. Jeez. Now excuse me, the water is creeping up my desk, and I have been told I have to evacuate.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
"I don't get people that think that directly using solar power will be better for nature. We have to steal the energy from plants directly when using solar or wind power"
I can think of several locations where you aren't stealing from plants, because plants simply don't exist.
And they just so happen to be pretty much uninhabited by anything else due to the extreme conditions, such as a lack of available water and insane heat (or lack of,) which means they can't survive there at all.
It's called the desert, and in orbit.
The only major ecological impact we'll have is all of the mining done to get the resources needed to power the entire planet from solar, and of course logistics involved in transport, etc.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Except you'd get MORE power building on mountains where photon flux density is higher, and floating barges would be a waste when you've got tidal energy.
Next?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The point you missed is that panels can be mounted to the roofs of already existing buildings. It's a simple fact but if we covered the roofs of every building with solar panels we would have more power than we could use (probably ever) during daylight hours.
The OP also made a serious mistake in taking the initial build-out costs as a yearly cost. Solar panels are typically warrantied to not fail for 25 years. Depending on type they can reliably produce power for an unknown period (there are panels built in the 70's still in operation, although amount of power produced declines gradually over time) although a certain number will die every year. It's been estimated that if you can put panels on every building that the yearly maintenance and panel replacement costs would be approximately what we spend on generation and maintenance anyway and in the panels favor is that there are no replacement costs for 25 years due to the warranty nor are there any emissions or resources used in the generation.
Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and others like wave generation are the future. Yes they are more labor and maintenance but they also don't consume resources in the power generation. Don't get me wrong, I still fully support Nuclear as a viable night and peak power provider. Personally I'd rather my money for power was spent on fueling US jobs than going to some oil baron that's using the money to fund terrorism (Saudi's) or going to someone like Chavez who's trying to destroy Venezuelan free society in the name of communism while enriching his family and friends.
Serge, the Seal of Death!
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
If nuclear power plants aren't economical at the moment they're going to be much, much worse if they're only allowed to generate power at night.
Solve the battery problem, then everything else falls into place.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Nope. Cthulu farted when he arose from his slumber.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
The sun rains down more energy on this planet in less than 12 hours than the human race uses in a whole year. I don't think us drawing off a small part of it for renewable energy is going to affect the natural world enough to notice except maybe a bit in the immediate vicinity of the power station.
Nuclear power is good for base load but not much good for peak or periodic power. You can't just power up a nuclear plant in a number of minutes, it takes hours at least. I suppose you could just keep them running at full power and shunt the steam around the turbines when you don't need power but that's not very efficient.
sarcasm detection algo seems to be a bit off. you might want to adjust some thresholds.
i think the locals would be more worried about the comet.
it would suck though. it would be like a dirty bomb over the entire earth.
We already monitor ULF in several high risk areas. Radon counts would be interesting. "The California Magnetic Network (CalMagNet) concept involves placing Ultra-Low-Frequency (ULF) based sensors along the major faults throughout California as a pilot network that will lay the groundwork for similar networks throughout the world. The data collected will allow researchers not only to validate the technique but also to provide data for the development of earthquake warning programs." http://www.quakefinder.com/joomla15/index.php/component/content/article/32
It would be interesting to add radon detectors to the CalMagNet ULF sensors that are already in place in California.
They already look at magnetic anomolies, air conductivity, and IR (GOES).
http://www.quakefinder.com/joomla15/index.php/earthquake-science-and-prediction
Plants absorb limited wavelengths of light (chlorophyll is green, therefore it reflects green and must absorb something else). Maybe someone can devise a solar panel that sits above the terrestrial level and absorbs the complement of the plant's absorbed spectrum, transmitting the rest to our leafy overlords...
No, I amortized the $4.5T and another $4.5T for infrastructure, maintenance, and installation and spread it over 30 years. This of course doesn't include the time value of money but it was an easy way to show that it was unfeasible, 6% of GDP just for current electricity generation capacity in insane.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Actually, Japan decided to use offshore wind. I expect they might conside the addition of building-integrated photovoltaics.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
not much good for peak or periodic power
What you can anticipate, you can accomodate.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
IIRC wind blows at night as well. Incidentally Japan chose wind. Offshore.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
HOWEVER, whoever wrote TFS has added other crap to an interesting paper. :
The obvious knock-on effect would be alarming readings at radiation monitors all over the area. In particular - to restate an old nuclear industry story - workers at places like Fukushima nuclear plant may well have set off alarms going into the plant for work. The evidence for this large amount of radon is ... ?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"